


When the Guff Comes

by Byacolate



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarf Marriage, Dwarven Traditions, Established Relationship, F/M, Families of Choice, Neurodivergent Warden, Orzammar, Post-Canon, post-Inquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4856999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alistair, remembering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Guff Comes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [therunya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/therunya/gifts).



> Therunya prompted me 'do an indulgent Alistair/Aeducan drabble for "We shared before sunrise" / "We talked about at a time when nothing bigger concerned us" / "I said to try to cheer you up"'. Who was I not to self-indulge?

He lays his head in her lap with the light of dawn still blue in the window, and she strokes his scar with a thumb while he says, “Do you remember that time, in Amaranthine...”

 

When everything, for a moment, was peaceful. Nobody‘d ever accused Alistair of optimism, but for once, the calm before the storm just felt like calm. They‘d been months apart; it had felt like a lifetime to Alistair, but in reality was very little time at all. Still, it was time enough for her to have made five new Wardens, if you didn‘t count the one she‘d resurrected from the dead with a Fade spirit. Six if you did.

 

He‘d come to Amaranthine with her watchful Mabari leading the way, making it rather difficult to tell who was hotter on the Hero’s tail. Certainly the dog managed to tackle her first, upon arrival. First to make her knees buckle in surprise from his ardor. First to steal her kisses. Couldn‘t sweep her off her feet in the middle of of Vigil‘s Keep though. That was Alistair‘s domain; only he had the arms for it.

 

But he‘d come to Amaranthine, the weight of Duncan‘s death behind him. Mostly. He was resting in his grave, finally at peace, and for that, so was Alistair. A freedom in his lungs and a future of his own on the horizon had given him wings all that long ride to Amaranthine and its Arl.

 

The Wardens she‘d made looked good. Too good, if you‘d asked him: Anders with his wandering eyes and blatant flirtations; Nathaniel Howe with his strong jaw, his solemn eyes, and ferocious loyalty; Velanna and her deadly grace, her confidence and slender fingers; Sigrun, full of smiles, bawdy jokes, strong arms and impressive tattoos. And then there was Varel - Varel, with his voice and his calm and his austerity, who managed to make even Alistair fluster once or twice. At least Justice was married (sort of) and dead (definitely). And Ohgren was... Ohgren.

 

Still, she‘d been in their attractive midst for months (months!), been mauled by the dog with all the pent-up affection his war-honed body could muster, and yet still she had a smile for him. He, positively wrought with ages of unfilled arms, had taken her fiercely far up off the ground before her Arling, her Wardens, and her dog.

 

Nobody’d ever accused Alistair of optimism, but in that moment, the world had narrowed down to her kind eyes and the weight of her in his arms.

  
  
  


 

 

He swallows his breakfast, one hand busy shoveling food with a fork, the other entwined snugly with hers. “Do you remember that week in Val Royeaux...”

 

The one where they’d taken off the armor and walked like tourists, where nobody knew their names if they didn‘t give them, and nobody cared. Leliana knew everything and everyone, it seemed, and served as a brilliant guide around the city stuffed with golden lions, and colorful heraldry hung from the city center and expanding ever outward.

 

The cheese had been addictive, and the chocolate even worse.

 

They’d attached themselves to Leliana when she had no business for the Divine, and wandered the city with their Wardens when she did. The reconnection with a friend so precious, families old and new convening in that city of color and wonder, had meant so much to the love of his life. Color rose in her cheeks in a way he had not seen in far too long - not since the birth of the new Amaranthine branch, where she’d cobbled together a sphere of belonging for those she kept close and dear. Most forget that the day her heroism was etched into history was the same she suffered a great many losses. She’d kept them safe and whole and happy, only to have to let them go.

 

Leliana’s presence eased that wound in a way Alistair had nearly forgotten still ached in her.

 

And in the late nights, when nothing dire had befallen them beyond Velanna’s aching stomach and Anders’ scuffle with a wayward bard, Alistair had taken her to that too-fine Orlesian bed with its silken sheets freshly laundered, and - well.

 

Val Royeaux was very, very good to them, until someone had recognized Nathaniel, and exposed them out of anonymity. Leliana had inflamed matters with a few silken words before she’d kissed the exalted Hero of Ferelden on both cheeks and plain on the mouth before a pair of Chantry sisters and vanished as swiftly as she’d come.

  
Val Royeaux was good, and then it was overwhelming, and then it was gone.

  


 

 

 

She offers him a waterskin and he takes it, draining half of it in a few heavy gulps, mindful of the eyes on him, and rasps when he hands it back, along with her broadsword, “Do you remember that time, in Orzammar…”

 

He’d remembered all they’d said before. Before he’d ever kissed her hand, or touched her face, or smiled into her hair, he’d forced her into the pit of her greatest shame. In Lothering she’d warned him that she was exiled, and he thought it a hindrance, and little more. Petty, in comparison to the Blight. Duty above all had squared her shoulders and resolved her not to speak on it again.

 

And then he’d come to know her. He’d come to care. And he’d watched her set her spine and move through the mire of Orzammar’s loathing without a word, and without pause. Exile, they’d called her, when they called her anything at all.

 

Alistair had journeyed to Orzammar all of twice. On the first, he’d watched her break herself for the people who spat at her feet. On the second, he’d watched them crown her Paragon.

 

They’d showered her with gifts and praise, ‘Back to your rightful place,’ they’d said, ‘We never once doubted you,’ they’d assured, ‘Your Highness, Commander, Lady Aeducan.’

 

She never spoke of Orzammar; it was through the Noble Caste he learned that she was once beloved. King Endrin’s second commanded great respect and love among her people. A fair and level head, they said, one worthy of the crown. She would have ruled exceptionally. If only her father had lived to see what she had become.

 

It was through the Warrior Caste he learned that in her time, long before the Wardens, she had dominated the Provings - once even in her own honor. The title she’d earned as Commander of Orzammar’s military had only officiated the esteem she’d always known among soldier and common warrior alike.

 

(It’s the casteless he remembers best, though - the societal discards, the urchins she went out of her way to aid, to inspire, to protect. The nobles will never know, and they will never care, but Alistair saw. No one was greater touched by her hand than they. She never talked about them, either, but it’s a different kind of shame.)

 

It was through the whispering Servant Caste a wall away that he learned they hoped to make her queen now, that Harrowmont would give the title over as long as it was she.

 

But it was through her silence and her vigil at his side that he knew she had not accepted.

 

They’d raised her to Paragon, unveiled a great stone statue in her honor, thrown feasts and Provings alike in her honor, and she took it all with grace. But she did not smile, not where his eyes could see. Not until they unearthed themselves from the mountain and found their Wardens, huddled together by the hearthfire of a little Frostback Mountain inn. They were half of them ill, and the other half only just recovered from illness, and all suffering severe restlessness, but through their groaning and demands for heat balm and extravagant tales, she could not stop smiling.

 

They didn’t need her to regale stories of what had come before. They knew well enough exactly who she was, what she had done, and what she could do. They were hers in a way Orzammar had foolishly, detrimentally cast aside. Orzammar's misfortune was in their favor, and Alistair vowed silently, inwardly never to squander that gift.

  
  
  


 

 

 

He rests his sword against hers by the bed before they go to sleep, and takes a moment to consider the rightness of it when she splays her hand over the small of his back, and he murmurs,  “Do you remember our wedding day?"

 

The night before they'd gone their separate ways - him to Orlais, her westward and on - and they'd pretended nothing at all was amiss. The small gathering of the people they knew and loved, who had borne witness to far greater feats of love than a hasty ceremony. The ring he'd slipped onto her finger felt small, compared to how often she adorned him with them herself, weighed him down with protective runes and enchantments. The vow she'd tattooed into the backs of his hands were painful, solid things instead. They were dark shapes carved in ink: protection, devotion, home everlasting. He'd wanted to do hers as well, but they had no time. No time.  
  
  
Alistair didn't want to think about the time they didn't have, or the time they'd lose. He wanted to think about her hand in his, and the color of her eyes, and how she smelled like him if he pressed his face into her shoulder and just breathed. He wanted to think about how proud he was, how in love they had been, were, and would be through it all. For a fleeting moment, he wanted to go away, to shed their duty to everything but one another - to bid the world as they knew it and run to Antiva, or to Rivain, or to an uncharted island on the Nocen sea. He wanted...

 

But no. He had what he wanted. And he'd carry it with him all the days of his life.

 

 

 

 

 

“Yes,” she says to all, to everything, to the things that were, the things that were to come, and the things yet still to pass. “I remember,” says she, and takes him to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Inquire about fic requests [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> Title from Fiona Apple’s “Anything We Want”: _We don't worry anymore cause we know when the guff comes we get brave / After all, look around / It's happening, it's happening, it's happening now_
> 
>  
> 
> If you are so inclined, feel free to follow [my Tumblr](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).


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